If you weren't planning to vote, would you change your mind just to get free fries, a free drink or a free bagel?

Probably not. But food-for-vote offers from Twin Cities restaurants and nightspots are still illegal. Federal and state officials worked through Election Day to tell everybody to cut it out.

When the Watchdog contacted the Minnesota secretary of state's office, legal advisor Bert Black had already talked to First Avenue, the Dakota Jazz Club and The Left Handed Cook. When the Watchdog told the U.S. attorney's office about deals offered by White Castle and Einstein Bros Bagels, the FBI cracked down on them, too.

"It's a logical extension of the Election Day atmosphere" to want to encourage people to vote, Black told the Watchdog. Even so, federal law calls free food and drink an "expenditure to influence voting":

"Whoever makes or offers to make an expenditure to any person, either to vote or withhold his vote, or to vote for or against any candidate ... shall be fined ... or imprisoned not more than one year..."

Minnesota's election bribery law is narrower: Anyone who promises "money, food, liquor, clothing, entertainment or any other thing of monetary value ... in order to induce a voter to refrain from voting or to vote in a particular way" is guilty of a felony.

People who accept the bagel are guilty, also.

The miscreants were asked to either drop their offers or extend them to everybody.

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"We were offering a free drink to anyone with an 'I Voted' sticker," said Dakota Jazz Club general manager Martina Priadka. Now, "we are offering a free 'I Voted' drink to everyone who comes in tonight, and I'm not asking them if they voted or not."